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10/02/2019 08:15 AMSusan Streker’s husband Kurt didn’t read her first two novels before publication. That changed for her third book, Drive, coming out on Tuesday, Oct. 15. Kurt read Drive and offered a pointed suggestion: He loved the book but hated the ending. Her agent had already told her the same thing.
Strecker, who lives in Essex and grew up in Madison, didn’t panic.
“I did not throw a shoe at him,” she recalled.
Instead, she undertook a complete rewrite.
“When I returned to it, I really found its soul,” she said. “It is a much better book now and I’m glad he was so honest with me.”
Strecker wanted Kurt’s opinion because the book involves a world with which she is very familiar: auto racing, but she wanted to make sure that what she had written would be understandable to an audience of which Kurt was representative: people not as familiar with drivers and race cars.
Still, Susan pointed out the book is about far more than the racing world. It forms the background for a story about Piper Pierson, a young woman whose life is disrupted in unexpected ways.
“It’s really less about race cars that Piper’s journey back into finding herself, from who she thought she was into finding somebody else. It is really a journey home,” Strecker said.
Strecker has been familiar with the world of race car driving since childhood. Her father Dick Moroso was a winning drag racer who, after retiring, owned and ran a raceway in Florida. Dick Moroso also managed the career of Susan’s brother Rob, who started racing go-karts and was well on his way to a successful NASCAR racing career that was cut short by his death in a car accident, not on a ractrack but on the road, in 1990 when he was 22. Rob Moroso had been so successful in his short racing career that he had amassed enough points to win the NASCAR Rookie of the Year award posthumously, the only driver ever to have done so.
Strecker’s first two novels, Night Blindness in 2014 and Nowhere Girl in 2015, earned positive reviews. Night Blindness became an IndieNext Pick and Nowhere Girl won the 2016 Beverly Hills Books Award. Kirkus Reviews, an important reviewing publication, called Nowhere Girl “compulsively readable.” That was welcome praise for Strecker.
“It’s like having Mick Jagger tell you he likes your dress,” she said.
She has learned a lot since she started writing, and about more than perfecting her craft. Publishers, she explained, no longer give the kind of promotional support, particularly for writers other than top-of-the-list authors, that they once did.
“It’s been quite a learning curve, mostly about non-writing things like marketing and publicity. I am proud of myself for doing it, but I am way out of my comfort zone,” she explained.”
There are some constants in all Strecker’s novels. The inspiration for both her title and key plot elements come from songs. Night Blindness came from a David Gray song of the same name. The Red Hot Chili Peppers’ song “Scar Tissue” inspired the plot of Nowhere Girl. The editors, however, liked the book but not the title. They changed it. Her current title, Drive, is, appropriately enough, also song by The Cars.
There is always a death at the beginning of Strecker’s novel. She describes that as an “interesting dynamic.” In Drive, one of the important characters is already dead when the book opens, but still figures in the plot.
“A relationship doesn’t end with death,” noted Strecker, who has a master’s degree in marriage and family therapy from Southern Connecticut State University.
In fact, she worked as a therapist before embarking on her writing career. She began to write when her two children, now 14 and 15, were small.
“I was just a chubby stay-at-home mom,” she recalled.
Strecker said she divides writers into two groups: plotters and pantsers. Plotters have the course of their novels worked out before they begin to write. Pantsers work by the seats of their pants, not knowing the ins and outs of the plot until they start writing.
“I am a pantser,” Strecker said. “I never have a clue what is going to happen. I transcribe my characters everyday as they write their stories.”
Strecker has just sent a fourth novel to her agent and is just beginning work on a fifth.
In addition to her own writing, she also edits books for other writers, as well as giving workshops for would-be writers. Along with getting her teenagers to horseback riding and lacrosse practice, that sometimes leaves her little time for writing.
“I don’t sleep a lot,” she said.
Recently, she added another activity to her schedule, running. She has even done a half-marathon in South Carolina.
“I am slow,” she said. “But a mile is a mile.”
Drive by Susan Strecker
Köehler Books, 2019
Appearances by Susan Strecker
Chester Library, Wednesday, Oct. 9 at 6:30 p.m.
Breakwater Books, Guilford, Thursday, Oct. 17 at 7 p.m.
Deep River Library, Wednesday, Nov. 20 at 6 p.m.